Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "" video.

  1. What we should remember with the EU, the project started out shortly after the second world war, there was a lot of good will in preventing a lot of the mistakes of the past and working closer together through integration, even then, European countries have not had an easy time of things and it's takes countless decades to get where we are at. The mistakes I'm seeing with these other unions like the one in South America and the African Union is that they are rushing them together, worse yet, they are letting anyone in, regardless of status, especially the African Union, that doesn't encourage reforms and change for the members, the carrot and stick approach which the EU has been very successful with it over the decades, apart from recently with Hungary and Poland, which in the case of Hungary, the EU needs to get a lot tougher with them. I think the other problem with the South American union is Brazil, you've got one country that's massive in comparison to the others, that creates an imbalance, the EU on the other hand have a mix of big and small countries, many of which keep each other in check, in the case of the South American union, Brazil rules the show.
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  2. Trade deals always become tricky, depending on what's in the deal and more so if one size is a lot bigger than the other, because the bigger side will expect a better deal than the smaller side and usually the bigger side can afford to play the long game, basically if you look at the EU and US, look at the trade deals they get, they are usually tilted in favour of the EU or US and it really boils down to two things, economy of scale and consumer power, which basically means that a lot of countries want good trade terms with big markets like the EU and US, they know that and they take advantage of that clout to get better deals for themselves.
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  3.  @froozigiusz  That's the problem, the African Union should have started out with a few countries that were like-minded, it would have been easier for it to work and easier to integrate. More importantly, by starting the foundations by having a few, there would be a carrot and stick approach for other countries that want to join in the future, which is basically what the EU does, basically, the African Union has little to no leverage over its members and no real incentive for countries not in it to want to join, but more importantly, there's no incentive for the wannabe countries to want to reform for the better. The EU did the union the smart way, over a longer time frame, it's had its mistakes over the years, that's to be expected, but its worse mistake is recently with veto rules and not having enough majority votes, something they need to change before 2030 and especially before any new country can join.
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